Favorites Emerge in the New Moon Race

As teams race for $30 million in prizes and bragging rights to the first privately funded moon landing, the question is, can they make it by the 2015 deadline? And, given their independent business plans, does it matter if they do?

Twenty-five teams are officially in the running for the Google Lunar X PRIZE (GLXP), the $30 million prize for soft-landing a privately funded unmanned spacecraft on the moon. As the 2015 deadline approaches, however, it has become clear which teams are the early leaders in the chase to pull off a feat achieved only by two world superpowers, and not since the 1970s.

"This is really a predictable watershed year for the competition," says Bob Richards, co-founder and CEO of Moon Express, one of the top contenders in the competition. Richards spoke to PM by phone as he drove to his team's headquarters at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Bay Area. A rocket launch must be booked two years in advance, according to Richards, "so if you don't have a launch contract 24 months before the expiry of the prize, you're just not credible."

Richards is coy about the contract status of Moon Express. "We have launch arrangements, but we can't disclose or discuss them at this time," he says. But just as important as sealing the deal on a launch contract to be consummated years from now is the development of the lander hardware and software—that's what this competition is all about. "You can buy everything you need to get 249,999 miles" of the quarter-million-mile distance from the Earth to the surface of the moon, Richards says. It's that last mile that counts. "What you can't buy is the lander system itself that does the final braking and does the landing. That doesn't exist."

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Moon Express is building a lander that will fire up its descent and landing rockets to "hop" (rather than roll) the required 500 meters across the lunar surface to qualify for the GLXP win. Richards further envisions numerous "microhoppers" attached like barnacles to the outside of the main vehicle that would depart on their own individual missions after landing on the moon.

Another top competitor for the X Prize is Astrobotic Technology, based at Carnegie Mellon University. That team says it has a launch contract with SpaceX for a ride on the Falcon 9 rocket. And this week, Astrobotic announced that it had completed a fully working prototype for its Polaris moon rover. The team is also working on its Griffin spacecraft from which the rover will descend on a ramp to the lunar surface.

The solar-powered Polaris rover is designed to operate in the indirect sunlight near the moon's north pole, where it will prospect for water ice. "It is the first rover developed specifically for drilling lunar ice," William "Red" Whittaker, Astrobotic's CEO and CMU robotics professor, said in a statement.

The Lunar X Prize rules provide for a $1 million bonus for finding an ice deposit on the moon. Ice is thought to exist in quantity in permanently shadowed craters at lunar poles. Its discovery would prove invaluable for any long-term operations on the moon, as water can be used for life support and also broken down into its constituent elements of hydrogen and oxygen for use as rocket fuel.

Of the 23 other teams in the competition, only one other group claims to have made launch arrangements. The Barcelona Moon Team said in August that it had secured a launch aboard a Chinese Long March 2C rocket. "Through this launch service contract, Barcelona Moon Team consolidates itself at the head of the teams participating in the competition, since securing the launcher is half the importance of the mission," team leader Xavier Claramunt said in a statement. Barcelona team members could not be reached for comment in time for this article. Like Astrobotic, the Barcelona Moon Team plans to send a wheeled rover to the lunar surface aboard a separate landing craft.

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The three teams—Moon Express, Astrobotic, and Barcelona Moon Team—have a long view in mind. All plan to sell commercial moon landing services to scientific researchers and anyone else who wants to put a payload on the moon. Richards calls it a condominium approach. In Moon Express's case, he says, 50 kilograms of the total 150-kg weight of the craft will be parceled out for discrete payloads. Astrobotic offers a similar service, charging up to $2 million per kilogram of payload aboard its lander or rover.

Richards refers to Google, which is fronting the prize money, as just the anchor customer for his company, claiming that he already has scientific researchers and other customers lined up for lunar landing services. With backing from co-founder Naveen Jain and other wealthy individuals, the company aims to develop the technology for landing commercial payloads on the moon and continuing on with or without Google's help.

Less flush but no less technically adroit, Astrobotic seems to have set its sights more firmly on winning not just the $20 million first prize but also as many of the five $1 million bonus prizes as possible. Those prizes are for, in addition to finding water, landing near a historic artifact such as an Apollo moon lander; surviving the 14-day lunar night; traveling more than 5 kilometers over the surface; and promoting ethnic and other kinds of diversity in the field of space exploration. (A second-place team stand to win $5 million, making the total prize purse $30 million).

With business plans in place to keep the winning team flying even after a GLXP win, the competition may serve its purpose even if the prize isn't claimed by the deadline: jump-starting a new capability for researchers and other potential buyers of lunar landing services.

Michael Belfiore is the author of Rocketeers: How a Visionary Band of Business Leaders, Engineers, and Pilots Is Boldly Privatizing Space and is a frequent PM contributor.

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